


Soon Enough

by sophinisba



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Community: thefuturequeen, Episode Related, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-17
Updated: 2009-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:22:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin and Morgana leave Gwen and Arthur alone at the campfire.  (A mildly shippy tag for episode 1x10.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soon Enough

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "campfire" at thefuturequeen's Gwen Battle Summer 2009.

There was nothing to listen to except the crackling of the logs and an owl hooting in the trees, and nothing to look at except the black night, or the fire, or Arthur. Gwen chose the fire, even though her eyes were starting to burn.

Normally, she thought – even though there was nothing normal about being here at all, really – normally she'd be chatting with Merlin or making herself useful somehow. Gazing silently into the fire was more Morgana's style, though Gwen and Merlin might do their best to cheer her up, and Arthur, well, _normally_ Gwen would be keeping her distance.

But Merlin hadn't spoken since they'd left the last fire – the funeral pyre back in Ealdor. And that kind of silence was all well and good for saying goodbye to a friend, or riding on one's own horse when it's impossible to have a conversation anyway, but since they'd made camp and Arthur started calling out orders it had got more and more awkward that no one was answering him.

Merlin was supposed to make the fire, and he'd trudged around gathering up wood and piling it up amid the stones Gwen had laid out, but when it came time to light it he just crouched there with the flintstone in his hand, staring blankly into the circle.

"Hurry up," said Arthur, "I'm freezing." Gwen touched Merlin's shoulder gently, wanting him to look at her and talk to her, just as Arthur added, "Come on, Merlin, it's not that difficult, is it? You've never had any trouble with this before."

Then Merlin jerked away and stood up, dropped the flint in Gwen's hand without looking at her or at Arthur, and stalked off into the trees.

"_Merlin!_" Arthur shouted and started to follow him, but Morgana stood in his way and hissed, "Leave him alone, for pity's sake." Arthur stopped short and just stared as Morgana went after Merlin, and that was how (though she still didn't understand _why_) Gwen was left alone with an angry crown prince in a cold clearing in the middle of an unknown wilderness.

"Honestly," Arthur said to Gwen, "it's as if he's looking for new and impressive areas of incompetence. He's done this for me on a dozen hunting trips with no tantrums whatsoever."

Gwen didn't say that tonight was different because she didn't need to. He knew as well as she did that everything was different now, and not just because of Will, and Arthur was clearly as disturbed as she was by Merlin's behavior just now.

Gwen wanted Merlin to talk to her, to know he could always talk to her, but more than that she wanted Morgana to talk to her, because Morgana always _had_. Except something had started to change when Merlin came into their lives. More and more often now Gwen would catch a look between them and realise she didn't understand what her mistress was thinking. That had never happened before, and she didn't like it.

And Arthur, who had known Morgana even longer than she had, and who probably knew Merlin better than anybody but Hunith did, above all else _Arthur_, who was so used to getting his way, must like it even less.

So he grumbled some more about Merlin and Morgana being too miserably moody and mysterious for their own good, but his heart clearly wasn't in it, and soon he fell silent and concentrated on starting and building the fire himself.

Gwen and Morgana had already unpacked the little food they'd taken from Ealdor. It didn't need to be cooked, and they wouldn't eat it until the others came back, so with nothing else to do she sat back and watched, and after a while she found herself talking to fill the void.

"This is good," she said. "Just as warm as the one Merlin made on the way there, only I think there's a chill in the air tonight."

Arthur grunted and poked at some of the logs to try to arrange their position, even though it was burning fine already.

"I'm not used to this," she said. "I grew up, you know, around my father's forge and my mother's kitchen, and then in the castle's kitchens before I started working for Lady Morgana. So I'm used to being around fire, but not like this. I mean, it's not cooking any food and it's not melting any metal. It's not even heating up a room, just –" she made a motion with one hand to indicate the way the smoke and the sparks went into the air and disappeared, and then she hugged herself around the arms. "So here I am sitting three feet away from it and I'm still sh–"

"Shh," Arthur hushed her, and Gwen had been going to say _shivering_, but stopped talking and shivered more deeply as he came to sit next to her, laid his mantle over her shoulders and kept his arm there. Gwen leaned toward him and he pulled her in closer, and then she finally was warm. They both went still.

"I'm not used to this," she said again, though she wasn't sure what she meant by _this_ anymore.

"That's all right," he said slowly, "neither am I."

"Well, they can't stay out there by themselves forever. They're people like you and me." Gwen had never said the words _you and me_ about Arthur and herself before. She had never even thought of them as having anything in common, not without Merlin or Morgana. "What I mean is, they'll want to eat and they'll want to warm up by the fire, and eventually they'll need to sleep."

"One would think." Arthur yawned quietly. "No, you're right. They'll talk each other down and then we'll all have an uncomfortable night. And tomorrow we'll go back to Camelot."

"And things will go back to normal?"

"Of course. But in the meantime all we can do it wait."

So they waited together, even though they didn't really need to. He rubbed her arms and she snuggled against his side and even though it was nothing like proper, that didn't matter, because it would be over soon enough. She thought he would let her go when the others came back but he just kept her close – ignoring Merlin's wide-eyed stare and Morgana's narrowed one – as if it was perfectly normal. Gwen decided that was all right.


End file.
